The Horse Road (11 page)

‘Thanks be that my honoured master is not at home to see this mess,' Fardad said when he returned.

‘What did you find to buy?'

‘One wagon of alfalfa mixed with fescue and feather grass, two sacks of peas, five sacks of grain, two sheep, and a crate of hens,' Fardad said, counting the items off on his crooked fingers. ‘And dates and raisins.'

There was chaos in the courtyard as the goods began to arrive. Fardad stood in the middle giving orders while boys dodged around the overturned buckets where we still balanced, sewing. They carried the sacks and bundles of hay into the storage rooms but let the chickens and sheep loose in the courtyard with the mares. Afterwards, when Fardad had gone to the kitchen for a drink of tea, I left the women
servants still sewing, and went to survey the storeroom. How long would it be before the Middle Kingdom's army was defeated, beaten back from the walls of our city? And for how many days could I feed all those hungry mares with the food that my mother's silver had paid for? And how long would that remaining silver last when we also had to buy food for ourselves to cook and eat?

It was impossible to know the answers; I sighed wearily and pressed my hand to my aching head. Sewing had given me a knot in my neck.

I fetched a soft brush, made of boar bristles, and began to groom Swan. I wished that my father had come home before the enemy sealed off the city; that his booming laughter would fill the silence of the courtyard. I wished that my mother would rise from her bed and start striding around again. I even wished that my brothers were at home; I began to miss Jaison's mischievous teasing and the practical jokes he played on me, and the solemn kindness of Petros.

‘But they're not here,' I said aloud, stroking Swan's ears. ‘It's just you and me, and we have to look after each other. I'll keep you safe, I promise.'

Then I said no more, because my throat was tight with fear, and because I had already failed her by letting her become trapped in this place that must have seemed so strange to her.

‘Kalli?' called Lila's voice, and she slipped into the storeroom beside me. ‘What have you done outside?'

‘It's to shade the mares. Can you help with the sewing?' I asked, and soon we were both balanced on buckets, needles and thread in hand, a thin coloured shade falling across our faces.

‘It will blow off on a windy day,' I fretted.

‘It can be repaired. You had to do something. My mother says the Chinese sent a group to the gate today to propose a treaty, but the king rejected it. Our cavalry is riding out to attack at first light tomorrow.'

‘We should go down to the hippodrome and see them leave.'

‘Oh, I don't think I'd be allowed to.'

Lila's parents were far stricter than mine; everything had to be done according to rules of social
protocol. A young girl should be kept mainly at home, unless attended by senior servants or family relatives. Going down to the east gate to gawk at soldiers riding to war was probably not on the list of activities that Lila's parents considered suitable for their unwed daughter. I, however, knew that Lila was much tougher than her delicate face and her antelope eyes made her appear.

‘Perhaps we could just go for a morning ride; the mares need some exercise,' I suggested, and Lila's winged brows swept upwards as she smiled.

‘Perhaps! I will come over early and –'

A loud rapping at the closed front doors made us pause, turning our heads toward the sound. Fardad came from the kitchen, stroking the long fringe of his moustache, to peer out of the small flap in the door.

‘Who's there?' I called, but my voice was lost in the rattle of bolts as Fardad swung both doors wide with great haste before backing away with his eyes lowered.

My mouth gaped open. My knees turned to jelly and for an instant I wobbled on my bucket. Lila jumped nimbly down from hers and smoothed the folds of her gown, but I stood as though turned to a statuette. My voice lodged in my chest when I should have been uttering words of gracious greeting.

The entourage entered, scattering mares, chickens, and sheep that bleated nervously, as though calling for their mothers although they themselves
were matronly. The lone rooster, that had been amongst the crated hens, flew upwards, crowing and scrabbling at my roof of coloured cotton. Everyone ignored him.

There followed a moment's silence that seemed to stretch on endlessly, pulled taut as a piece of horsehair on a two-stringed guitar. And still my voice was lost, sinking deep into the depth of my being, into that dark pool of silence where I hid myself.

‘Arash?' I whispered at last, a sound no bigger than the sigh a leaf makes when it lets go of a twig and falls through the air.

High on his palomino horse, he surveyed the chaotic scene without a flicker of emotion in his angled dark eyes. Even a rectangle of blue cotton, casting a coloured shade over him, could not diminish his haughty, aristocratic appearance. His narrow face with its fine, high bones turned towards me and instantly my gaze flickered away.

‘Kallisto,' he said formally, ‘is your honourable father at home?'

I opened my mouth, closed it, and licked my lips.
You look like a fool
, warned a voice inside my head.
Speak!

‘My f-father is away in the Levant, and m-my mother is wounded and in her bed,' I stammered at last, my voice so low that Arash had to bend his long, supple back, clad in a tunic of red velvet, in an attempt to hear it.

‘She c-cannot see you,' I said more loudly, staring at the ground, at my boot toe nudging a pile of horse droppings, at the smooth front hooves of Arash's palomino, pale golden-white as seashells, and perfectly trimmed into curved crescents. I could not raise my head to look Arash in the face although my neck muscles seemed to strain in the effort.

The rough bare feet of one of his slaves stepped forward; I saw a blackened nail, and the dust between each toe. I saw the slave's bent back, and the moment when Arash stood on it to dismount from his horse. Then his boots, of leather so fine and supple that they seemed like living things, appeared in my line of vision as he came towards me.

‘I am sorry to hear about your honourable mother,' he said, and his voice was so smooth that the words seemed to drip from him, like honey falling in perfectly formed drops from the end of a knife. I understood why my father talked about how beautifully he could recite Persian poetry.

‘I shall send your mother a magus from the court later this evening,' he continued. ‘Meanwhile, I have been given the honour of ensuring that the elite horses are indeed safe within the city. I am to carry a tally of them to the treasurer. The horses of our kingdom are its treasure, as even foreign rulers have made clear.'

I watched the feet of a groom as he stepped forward to take the palomino's reins. The slave stood upright again, and used one bare foot to shove aside
a sheep that had come trotting past with a mild, inquisitive gaze.

At last, my shoulder muscles burning as though I had been lifting sacks of grain instead of my own head, I raised my gaze higher and stared over Arash's shoulder. The palomino was draped, from withers to croup, in a caparison of red velvet embroidered with gold thread in a pattern of roses, and perfectly matching Arash's riding trousers. Its bridle was of red leather, gilt with silver and inlaid, in the centre of the brow band, with an emerald. The rings of the snaffle bit were silver gilt, and also shaped like roses. In our city, the social status of a person was revealed by the trappings of the horse, the spendidness of its felts and bridle. Anyone could see, at a glance, that Arash moved in aristocratic circles, but it was not this that was holding my attention. It was the mention of our elite horses that had snared my focus.

‘My mother is a free woman,' I muttered, my voice finding strength. ‘All the horses here belong to her.'

‘The treasurer has asked for a census, and I have simply come to tally them – with your permission of course.'

Was he mocking me? I darted a glance at his face but its aquiline profile betrayed nothing; his long narrow eyes held mine for a moment, then slid away. I noticed that he had begun to grow a beard since last I had seen him, and that his skullcap was crusted with pearls.

A servant moved at his shoulder as he paced amongst the mares, staring at them but saying nothing. There was something unsettling about his silence; when presented with a herd of our mares, most people gave exclamations of admiration and pleasure. The chestnut mare, Nomad, stretched out her nose to him but he brushed past it, ignoring her. My fingers curled nervously into fists.

‘They are flesh and blood after all, and smell like common horses do,' he said at last, and flashed me a glittering smile that revealed perfectly even teeth. ‘I do not see how they will carry the emperor to the celestial gates and the peach of immortality. Now, describe them for my scribe.'

For a moment I almost refused but Lila stretched her eyes wide at me, from where she stood in the shadow of the storage room doorway, and I began to speak. I gave each mare's name, her height, her age, her colour, and the scribe's brush flowed over the scroll of papyrus that a slave held for him, resting on a tablet of wood.

‘I remember once seeing you, at some exhibition of mounted games on your mother's farm, riding a white horse,' Arash said when I had named every mare in the courtyard. ‘But you were a child at the time; perhaps you no longer have her? Although I am sure that your father listed her in your bride contract. Where is she?'

‘She's h-here.'

‘And does not belong to your mother?'

‘She is mine.'

‘But yet, you are a daughter and everything that is yours is actually your father's to give away as he pleases. Only men can own possessions, or disperse them in contracts.'

‘Swan is mine,' I repeated, stubbornness making me brave. ‘She was given to me by my mother who owns all these mares.'

Arash raised his arched eyebrows as if I was a child, and looked bored. ‘Let me see her,' he said, as if I wasn't worth debating with even though, at home on winter evenings, my father loved to hear me debate, on a topic of his suggestion, with my brothers.

Arash followed me into the stable. Swan gleamed in the dim light; her limpid eyes loosened the knot in my throat.

‘White as a Pegasus in your father's Greek tales,' Arash said lightly, as though her beauty were an ordinary sight that didn't touch his heart. ‘What a pity she hasn't wings to fly away and carry you over the enemy encampment. I hear that you like to ride far off, in the mountains. Is this true?'

I nodded, tongue-tied again. Who had told him about me and what else did he know? I didn't want him thinking about my freedom, my wanderlust; I didn't want him even looking at Swan and making her ears swivel with his smooth voice that was perhaps mocking, perhaps not.

‘A mare as fine as this must have many beautiful caparisons,' he said. ‘Put one on and bring her outside where I can admire her better.'

He strolled away; his slender strength was like the blade of a costly sword against the doorway's light. My fingers shook as I laid Swan's three best blankets over her withers and straightened them with a deft twitch. On top, I laid her very best caparison. Its quilted golden velvet was embroidered with white birds, blue moons, orange flowers. I myself had embroidered it on winter evenings, warming my feet at a charcoal brazier, when I should instead have been embroidering the covering for my bridal bed.

I ran my hands down Swan's shining face. Her soft nose pushed into my sweating palm as though to reassure me. I set her saddle cushions, covered in blue leather and embroidered with golden flowers, upon the blanket and bent to fasten the surcingle under the pale curve of her belly, the breast strap across her narrow chest, the crupper under her plume of tail. It was like fallen snow lifted upwards again by the wind. I fastened her two neck collars; they were of orange brocade sewn with beads of blue Italian glass. Swan bent her face as I held up her bridle, and opened her mouth as I slipped in the silver plated bit with its jointed snaffle bar. The little silver swans hanging from the cheek straps chimed faintly as Swan tossed her head. I smoothed her forelock downwards.

‘Swan, come on, lovely girl,' I said, placing a hand
under her head so that she would follow me outside. She was a mare who could be stubborn, and would not move if you simply pulled on her lead rope but would dig in her front hooves and brace herself, leaning back against the rope. Only when I stood by her and spoke her name would she consent to follow; then, she would go anywhere beside me – into cold turbulent water, through rippled sand, down deep ditches, over fallen trees, through thorn bushes, through drifting snow. She would walk with her face almost touching my shoulder, as though we were companions, neither one leading or being led.

Now she followed me into the courtyard where Arash stood elegantly, surrounded by his retinue of slaves and servants. His palomino stood as though it were a horse carved from sandstone beneath its red velvet. I walked Swan around the courtyard and Arash watched with his eyes narrowed again. I wondered what he was thinking, why he wanted to see her outside. What else my father had listed on my marriage contract?

‘Tell me about these elite horses that your family breeds,' Arash said suddenly.

I cleared my throat, encouraging my voice to break free. ‘Swan is a f-fine example of all our Persian horses,' I began, my voice a murmur brushing against Swan's neck.

‘What?'

I cleared my throat again. ‘She has a double spine
like a tiger.' I ran my hand along the double ridge of muscle on Swan's back.

‘Everything about her is long and slender,' I said, and my voice finally became strong. It was easy to talk about horses, even to strangers. ‘Her body is long and narrow. Her long legs are dry and fine. Her slender neck is set high on the shoulder, and she carries it upright. Her head is elegant as a sculpture, with a straight profile. Her eyes are huge and shaped like almonds. She moves across the ground like a bird gliding on water. Everything about her speaks of endurance, and strength, and fire.'